Les Mondes extraterrestres

Love the premise of this Netflix mini-series, which is: suppose you have an exoplanet with certain features (high gravity, oxygen-rich...) and, using comparative biology and special effects, imagine what kind of lifeforms could evolve there. It's the sort of stuff a committed science fiction writer would feverishly write pages and pages about for his world-building; as an unapologetic nerd, I kind of dig that.

CGI is impressive, although at least 50% of the run-time of each episode is devoted to short documentary segments about animal life on Earth. On one hand this is perfectly undestandable for reasons of budget (I imagine CGI of this quality is insanely expensive, so you need to pad out the length) and especially to compare the imagined alien lifeforms to known ones.

On the other hand, these comparisons often feel too broad and forced, so they are sort of hit-and-miss. For example, we skip from the dangers faced by young "sky grazers" on "Atlas" (the high-gravity planet which starts the series) before they learn to fly to... baby meerkats facing scorpions? As much as I find meerkats adorable, I don't quite see the connection other than the very generic "young animals are in constant danger in the wild". Given the "sky grazers" anatomy and life cycle, the race to the ocean of baby turtles would have been a far more appropriate comparison.

Neat concept, though.

7/10

It is an undoubtedly fascinating hypothetical visualisation of what unique alien ecosystems might look like on other planets - if we apply our current understanding of the basic principles of life to otherworldly environments. That said, given the show's clear budgetary limitations (despite the impressive CGI) & the over reliance on repeated shots, they manage to competently make the best content imaginable with the limited resources they clearly have at their disposal.

That's why so much focus is shifted on to Earth, hosting interviews with experts giving expository information; the creators aren't simply justifying the theoretical realisations featured on screen but they're also clearly filling the run time - which would otherwise be vacant if the directors planned on featuring additional sequences elsewhere in these constructs.

For a documentary in theory set on alien planet it focus half of time on vanity shots of Earth people, instead of filling that time explaining how would be posible the life shown. In that way, the 2005 show from National Geographic, although not so visually stunning, was a much better documentary.

Unfortunately, like in the headline said, this documentary is more about the life of single human-beings and their professions instead of alien life.

Maybe 40% of the documentary is about the real (how could it be) alien life. But the 60% rest of every and each episode is about a human being who does something in chemistry, biology or physics to explain behaviour of (alien) life.

CGI was awsome and it was an interesting series, but i wanted a whole documentary about extrasolar life, not about life on earth and the life of some individuals.

75% of each episode goes on what's happening in earth. And they show one cgi scene for 4-5 times. If wanna hear about earth and species here would have just watch NatGeo. Disappointing. So much for something called AliEn WoRlDs